(I introduced the great American scholar, Leslie Fiedler, in Part I of these essays on children’s music.  My comments are informed by concepts introduced in a graduate course Leslie taught on children’s literature.)

Burl Ives collected and recorded hundreds of folk songs.  To me he is one of the greatest folklorists around.  His high sweet friendly voice is perfect for children’s music.  Released in 1965, although some of the songs are just Burl and his six string, most of the arrangements on this album are very elaborate, played by a full orchestra, with beefy background vocals, typical of almost all the children’s records I owned as a child during the 1950’s.  But the arrangements are eloquently descriptive of the words, the words are innocent and profound and alarming, and the whole thing is carried by the subtlety, sincerity, and silliness of Ives’ singing.  He has such a vast knowledge of folk music that he can draw on dozens of ancient songs from Europe and America that were not originally intended for children, but which are perfectly suited for that purpose.  And if you pay close attention, you will realize he sings, not just about big fat cows and little grey cats, but unrequited love, scary witches, marital strife, poverty, and death – the stuff of the greatest children’s stories and songs.

Ives sings this eerie arrangement of Vachel Lindsay’s poem, “The Moon is the North Wind’s Cookie.”

The Moon’s the North Wind’s cookie.
He bites it, day by day,
Until there’s but a rim of scraps
That crumble all away.

The South Wind is a baker.
He kneads clouds in his den,
And bakes a crisp new moon that . . . greedy
North . . . Wind . . . eats . . . again!

This stunning poem could be a parable of samsara, the reincarnation of souls.  But it is also about goods being consumed and replaced.  Vachel Lindsay was, after all, a twentieth century American.

Leslie Fiedler analyzed the Oz books by L. Frank Baum as archetypal Americana.  Despite all the magic and weirdness and witchery, the core values of the books are entirely commercial and technological.  In the Oz books, one of the most important magical powers turns out to be electricity.  It is mechanical flim flam that makes the Wizard appear to be magical.  Baum was enthralled by the scientific magic of 20th Century America.  Baum, in retrospect, is one of the originators of steam punk.

As Fiedler explained, one of the most explicit expressions of this American idealism in the Oz books is that everything is replaceable and everything can live.  This is a uniquely American value.  The books say over and over that there is no death.  Baum believed in the eternal transmigration of souls.  But in the Oz books, instead of the rebirth of incorporeal souls, we find a completely physical theory of immortality based on the American notions of mass production and replacement of damaged parts.

For example, in The Tin Woodman of Oz, we learn that the Tin Man was once a human – or Ozian – wood cutter named Nick.  He was in love with a Munchkin named Nimmie Annie who was a servant of the Wicked Witch of the East.  The Witch learns of their love and enchants the wood cutter’s ax to chop off parts of Nick’s body.  It is technical the ingenuity of Ku-Klip the tin smith who comes to the rescue.  He replaces each severed limb with one of tin until Nick is entirely made of tin.  Years later, the Tin Man encounters his own severed head in a cupboard.  The head is still alive and is very unpleasant company.  There are few passages in any literature that are more disturbing.

As Oz evolved from one book to the next, Baum eventually envisaged a utopia where no one ever dies, not even severed hunks from people’s bodies.  Oz is a world in which scientifically manufactured goods and commodities are capable of defeating all sorrow and all strife.  Even death.  And so it is with the baker who renews Vachel Lindsay’s eternally reincarnating cookie.

While Burl Ives is associated with Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie and other radical folkies of the 1950’s and early 1960’s, as the arrangements on this record show, he is really a much more main stream entertainer.  Of course it helped that he is white, which is why I don’t remember seeing Ella Jenkins doing children’s songs on TV from that period.  Throughout my entire childhood, I can count on one finger the number of times I saw Pete Seeger on television:  when he sang “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers Show and, as a consequence, was blacklisted from TV for decades.  I don’t know how many times, growing up, I watched Ives on television; he was a perennial presence.  Moreover Ives is an accomplished Hollywood movie actor, even winning an Academy Award as supporting actor in the movie Big Country.

And did he suck up to the House Unamerican Activities Committee?  Pete Seeger thought so.  I don’t know.  It doesn’t change the greatness of his music.  No one ever has, or ever will, record greater children’s music than Burl Ives.

Vachel Lindsay, Albert M. Hague, “The Moon is the North Wind’s Cookie,”  Publisher not credited, Licensing Agency not credited (1965).  From:  Burl Ives, The Lollypop Tree:  Burl Ives Sings Folk Songs for Children, Harmony Records, XLP 79724 (1965).  Cover Art: unknown.

(I introduced the great American scholar, Leslie Fiedler, in Part I of these essays on children’s music.  My comments are informed by concepts introduced in a graduate course Leslie taught on children’s literature.)

To my ears, the songs are over produced, with unnecessary reverb on the voices, and borrowings from the middle-of-the-road orchestral Broadway styled arrangements.

But what make the songs great is that Sandy Tobias Offenheim so beautifully expresses funny nuances that only a kid would remember:

My six year old moldars are growing like boulders
At the very, very, very back of my mouth.*

And she depicts the craziness of ankle biters that is recognizable only to grownups who have to spend a lot of time with the little monsters:

The child sings, Mommy!  The Mommy says, Yes?  The child sings, Mommy!  The Mommy says, Yes? The child sings, Mommy!  The Mommy says, Yes?  The child says, I forgot.**

And she livens the songs with silly sound effects and makes great use of the voices of very talented child performers.

And this song touches on a heart rending and profound proclivity of the little ones:  “Talking to Myself.”

Talking to myself is so very good for me,
Can work out all my problems,
Plan a strategy.
I don’t have to use my manners,
And there’s no apology.
Talking to myself
Is very good for me.

When grown-ups see you talking to yourself
They say, “Who are you talking to?”
What they don’t seem to realize is that
I’m doing what I want to do.
Speaking to whom I wanna speak.
Saying what I wanna say.
No one gets hurt,
Don’t have to leave,
I can always stay**

In this song Offenheim is depicting what Leslie Fiedler described as one of the deepest dream needs of children: the need to be independent – on one’s own.  Leslie said the fantasy at the heart of all great American children’s literature is escaping from home.  How many children’s stories can you name that turn on the fantasy of an alternate family or of leaving the family?  They depict a world in which the child or child figure fends for him or herself without the interference of fathers and mothers and wicked sisters and stupid brothers.  The Odyssey, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, The Cat in the Hat, Cinderella, Thumbelina, Lord of the Rings, The Paper Bag Princess, Where the Wild Things Are, and millions of other stories adopted by children all turn on leaving family behind.  They begin with the simplest act in the world – being abandoned or leaving home.  This allows the child to be who he or she really is, without interference.

Many children’s books – and the child’s private fantasies – permit the child to experience the deepest indignation they feel – the resentment about the failings of human institutions, the first and most disappointing of which, is the family.  Within the family, the child is helpless.  The child imagines a world in which she will have all the powers that others use to control her.  The power that the grownups exercise devour the child, cannibalize her spirit.

But there is also, associated with this indignation that children feel at their subjugation within the family, a subtext of unbearable heartbreak borne by parents.  Because parents, the ones upon whom the child should be able to rely for safety and nourishment and love, are as powerless against adversity as any child.  At some point, every parent betrays their pathetic ineffectual humanness to their children.  It is a fall from grace that every parent knows.

Think how much more agonizing it is for the parents in war-torn and impoverished communities who cannot find a way to feed, shelter, and protect their children.  So it was when the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm were first told.  Story tellers adapted their craft to make sense of the Seven Years War, the revolutions in Holland, France, and America, and many other rivalries and conflicts that directly involved, exploited, and annihilated civilian populations.  Sometimes parents cannot give children what they need the most, what they need to merely survive.  This helplessness and poverty often appears in fairy tales.  The parents, because of their feebleness, become the enemies of their own children.

One of the first illusions of each child is that someday you really grow up, reach peace, attain power, and have total control.  The first time a child sees their parent in a weak state is unbearably bitter.  This pushes the child toward independence, and explains the power they acquire from leaving the family behind, even if only for a short time.

So it is, that the child in this song sings:

Friends are very good to have
I’M the first one to agree.
But now, I just wanna talk to ME.**

* Sandy Tobias Offenheim, “My Six Year Old Moulders Feel Bigger Than Boulders,” Cee & Cee Music (CAPAC) (1977).  From Sandy Tobias Offenheim, Honey On Toast: More Songs of Sandy Tobias Offenheim, Berandol Records, BER 9021 (1977).  Album design – Mike Milicic; Photography – John To.

** Sandy Tobias Offenheim, “I Forgot,” Cee & Cee Music (CAPAC) (1977).  From Honey On Toast.

*** Sandy Tobias Offenheim, “Talking to Myself,” Cee & Cee Music, (CAPAC) (1977).  From Honey On Toast.

(I introduced the great American scholar, Leslie Fiedler, in Part I of these essays on children’s music.  My comments are informed by concepts introduced in a graduate course Leslie taught on children’s literature.)

“The Cat Came Back.”  A perfect song for children.  Absurd, comical, mysterious, and melodious.  Those of us living in The Modern World first heard “The Cat Came Back” because of Fred Penner.  He is a warm beguiling mirthful performer.

How surprised I was to learn that this song is more than a hundred years old, written in 1893 by Harry S. Miller, and that it was originally entitled “The Cat Came Back: A Nigger Absurdity.”  It was probably performed in minstrel and vaudeville shows by white performers wearing blackface – a mopey faced clown bemoaning the cat who would not go away.  A product of America’s racist foundations, this song has been reclaimed and reformed by Fred Penner, and blissfully bestowed upon the children of our putatively more enlightened times.

The story concerns a cat.  A very bad cat.  We don’t know what the cat did, but it is clear nobody wants him around.

Old Mister Johnson had troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat which wouldn’t leave its home;
He tried and he tried to give the cat away,
He gave it to a man goin’ far, far away.

But all attempts to expel the cat fail.  A group of children sing the chorus with Penner:

Penner & Kids:     But the cat came back the very next day,
                                 The cat came back, we thought he was a goner
                                 But the cat came back; it just couldn’t stay away.
FP:                           Give me a meow.
Kids:                        Meow.

In fact, this cat is so bad, everybody wants him dead.  One person “loaded up his shotgun with nails and dynamite” and tries to shoot the cat; the cat is sent off in a balloon; and then it is sent off on a train.  When a cyclone blows through, even the forces of nature are insufficient against the cat’s pertinacity.  And almost everyone who tries to purge the cat suffers mortal consequences.  Exploding guns, deadly balloon accidents, crashing trains.  Kids love this stuff.

Leslie Fiedler argued that children’s literature is full of Thanatos, the destructive impulse that can only be resolved by death.  He said that Thanatos is the most elemental manifestation of, and precursor to, Eros, the drive to propagate and create.  Young children find violence and destruction exciting in a primordial instinctive sensual way.  In their play and in their literature there are cars smashing, talking bunnies being eaten, bombs blowing things to smithereens, wizards blasting lightning bolts, canons firing from the decks of ships, and people falling off of cliffs.  “The Cat Came Back” is replete with Thanatos.  But it is hilarious.

Harry S. Miller.  “The Cat Came Back.”  1893.  Leo Feist Inc.  From Fred Penner.  The Cat Came Back: A First Album by Fred Penner for Children Ages 3-10.  1979.  Shoreline Records.  SL-009.   Album design – Not credited.

Leadbelly spent many years in prison, did a lot of scrapping and fighting, and nearly murdered a couple of people.  If he had to comply with a modern board-of-education background check he would never be permitted to enter an elementary school and give the children the most miraculous experience of their lives.  But in 1960 they let him do it.  I would love to talk to any child who was lucky enough to be in the audience for the making of this wonderful record.

And the children all join him on the chorus of this hopeful but unsettling song, “We’re In the Same Boat Brother.”

We’re in the same boat brother, we’re in the same boat brother
And if you shake one end you’re going to rock the other,
It’s the same boat brother

And his gigantic 12-string guitar, the strings pitched down from E to C, booms like a rolling ocean and his voice is bright and clear.

Oh Lordy look down, from His holy place
Say Lordy me but I see a face,
I am about to launch the human race,
So they give him a boat with a mixed-up crew,
With eyes of black and brown and blue,
So that’s how come that you and I
Got just one world with just one sky.

Leslie Fiedler discussed Leo Tolstoy’s little book What is Art?  Tolstoy postulated that the greatest and most immortal art is art that unites all people without exception.  Great art cannot be patriotic art because such divides people against one another.  It cannot be cultish “Church art” because it isolates one group from the rest of the world. 1*  It cannot be decadent art because it draws together only the elitist idle rich and is incomprehensible to most people. 2**  More significant is that children want nothing to do with any of these kinds of art; they are all grownup kinds of art.

Tolstoy said only Christian art can be good art.  To know what he meant, it is important to know that the Christianity of Tolstoy has nothing to do with the sadistic bigoted genocidal greedy hypocritical phony Christianity of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.  Tolstoy founded his understanding of Christianity in the great Commandment of Love, which I have discussed elsewhere in these writings.  As a logical consequence of love, Tolstoy was a pacifist, advocated non violent resistance to tyranny, despised the rich and powerful for oppressing and exploiting the unfortunate and powerless, was extravagantly generous to the poor, and believed that society should be governed by anarchy.  He renounced marriage and private property, and advocated celibacy and vegetarianism.  He was a great inspiration to Mahatma Gandhi.  He must have been quite a challenging companion.

As Leslie pointed out, Tolstoy identified only two kinds of art that united all people:

(1) art transmitting feelings flowing from a religious perception of man’s position in the world in relation to God and to his neighbor – religious art in the limited meaning of the term; and (2) art transmitting the simplest feelings of common life, but such, always, as are accessible to all men in the whole world – the art of common life – the art of a people – universal art. 3***

Interestingly, both these values – spirituality and universality – are frequently found in children’s music.  Leadbelly is not unique in singing Christian spirituals for children.  Ella Jenkins, Burl Ives, Peggy Seeger and many others have included gospel songs in their children’s repertory.  And Leadbelly’s message in “We’re In the Same Boat Brother” is explicitly universal:  we are all interdependent; the fate of one is the fate of all, and he warns us that we must figure out how to live with one another on this “ball of blue, somewhere in space.”

Earl Robinson, E. Y. Harburg, “We’re In the Same Boat Brother,” Folkways Music Publishers Inc. (1960).  From Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), Negro Folksongs for Young People: Sung by Leadbelly, Folkways Records & Service Corp., FC 7533 (1967).  Album design – Not credited.

1*      Count Lyof N. Tolstoi.  What is Art?  Aylmer Maude, trans.  New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.  1899.  Pp. 142-143.

2**    Tolstoi.  Pp. 150.

3***  Tolstoi.  Pp. 144-145.

Ella Jenkins is one of the most active and joyful of all children’s folk musicians.  You can tell, just from listening to her voice that she is both tough and lovable.  You can have fun with Ella, but you don’t dare misbehave.  And there is a true scholarly spirit behind her prolific collecting and recording of children’s folk music from around the world.  We are listening to a call and response song, a song style that appears frequently on Ella’s records.  She brings the whole audience into her songs, makes each child a participant in her performance.  This album was recorded with children singers – as the album cover says, “Members of the Urban Gateways Children’s Chorus” – and they reply to each of her questions.

Did you feed my cow? (Yes, Ma-am)
Could you tell me how? (Yes, Ma-am)
What did you feed her? (Corn and Hay) . . . .

And so the story goes until:

Did my cow get sick? (Yes, Ma-am)
Was she covered with tick? (Yes, Ma-am)
How did she die? (Uh, Uh, Uh)

And then, a rather doleful end:

Did the buzzards come? (Yes, Ma-am)
How did they come? (Flop, Flop, Flop)

Here is another children’s song that doesn’t feel bleak, until you explore its logical implications. The loss of a cow to a small farmer was often not merely a sad event, it could be financially devastating.  Another wrinkle:  cows are ruminants and they cannot digest corn.  Did her diet contribute to her demise?

Leslie Fiedler said that kids don’t need a happy ending.  Children’s literature, and I would add, children’s music, does not do away with despair.  These art forms celebrate, explore, and elucidate sadness, loneliness, and terror.

Books chosen by kids are about terrible situations, not benign ones.  Children respond to books about horrifying psychological states.  For example, even though it was not written for children, they chose Robinson Crusoe because its essential appeal is terror.  The subtexts of the book are fear of injury, fear of starvation, and fear of cannibalism.

Leslie said despair is celebrated in the happy endings and despair is celebrated in the sad endings.  This is an aphoristic way of saying that children understand and are fascinated by bereavement, isolation, danger, alienation, fear.  They live with nightmares.  Children love, in fact, need stories that deal with and resolve these fears.  They love going through a nightmare with someone.

And that is the astonishing thing about this song.  When you hear it, when you sing it with your kids, when you laugh about it, you have no sense of its true subject matter.  Until you somehow separate yourself, and objectively reflect upon the lyrics, do you realize how grim and smelly and sad and repulsive they are.  And this is the most powerful magic of children’s music.  It allows us to bluntly reflect upon the inescapable horrors of life – without feeling the horror.  Children’s songs are like benign Virgils taking diminutive Dantes by the hand, and guiding them, protectively, through their nightmares.

Leslie asked, what is at the heart of a book that moves any person?  And he answered, great books allow us, in a state of waking consciousness, to explore the deepest psychological forces by which we are driven.  “Did You Feed My Cow?” does this by exploring the over and over great circle of nourishment, life, death, and the return to nourishment.  This is what Thoreau meant when he stated, “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”  The best children’s stories – and children’s songs – do this.

Traditional, Music by Ella Jenkins, “Did You Feed My Cow?” Ell-Bern Publishing (ASCAP) (1966).  From Ella Jenkins with Members of the Urban Gateways Children’s Chorus, You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song, Folkways Records, FC 7664 (1966).  Album design – June Martin, Ann Erickson; Illustration – Yoko Mitsuhashi.

Henry David Thoreau, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” (Published 1849).  From Henry David Thoreau.  A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Walden, or, Life in the Woods; The Maine Woods; Cape Cod (Ed. Sayre, Robert F. Sayre).  New York: Library of America (1985), page 243.

There is a fierceness about Pete Seeger’s children’s songs that you don’t hear in the friendly voices of Ella Jenkins or Burl Ives.  But fierce is good.  Kids cotton to that just as much as they do to songs about poop and pee or flying and cuddling.  Pete Seger is the noisy kid in the children’s music room to whom the stuffy teachers always say shhhhh.

And here’s a song full of everything that children love in a story:  terror, humor, romance, debauchery, gluttony, pathos, cowardice, violence, and death:  “Frog Went A-Courting.”  Frog rides to Miss Mouse, sets her on his knee, and asks her to marry him.  She needs the permission of Uncle Rat, and Rat is delighted and the wedding is arranged.  Rat and the young couple work out details of the wedding.  There are various versions of the wedding but it always ends in disaster.  In Pete’s version Mister Snake eats up the wedding cake, Rufus Grouse dances a wild breakdown, and Angus Slik eats so much he gets sick – how did a gigantic bull get in there any way?  In the end Mister Cat shows up, scares away the Frog and eats Miss Mousie.

Leslie Fiedler stated that the chief catastrophe in fairy tales is being eaten.  Hansel and Grettle, the Three Little Pigs, the Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, and a multitude of other tales deal with this problem.  Children have oral aggression.  Instinct drives them all to bite and they all have to be taught not to bite other people.  There are other torments suffered in fairy tales: starving, exile, being lost, dying, being immobilized.  Why is being eaten so much worse than any of these?  Why is being eaten such a deep fear?  It has something to do with hopelessness.  As long as you have a body, you still have a chance.  In fairy tales, even dead bodies can be brought back to life.  But when your body is destroyed all hope is lost.  But Leslie argued that the fear of being cannibalized plumbs even more primordial depths.

Fairy tales deal with the family, not class conflict, not political structure, not religious salvation.  And the happiest ending in fairy tales is getting married and starting a new family.  Happiness does not lie in being virtuous, loving god, being strong, or even being wealthy.  Fairy tale happiness is characterized by marriage, having children, carrying on the cycle of human life.

But marriage also has the virtue of being a way of leaving home, getting away from the parents.  Because, in fairy tales, there is always a problem associated with the parents.  Parent figures are usually the creatures who stop marriage, who stop the cycle of life, either through weakness or wickedness.  The best way to stop someone from marrying, is to incorporate them, to eat them.  In fairy tales true love is thwarted in numerous ways: by being eaten, like the boy in “The Juniper Tree,” being paralyzed like Sleeping Beauty, being poisoned like Snow White, being imprisoned like Rapunzel.  It is usually the wicked mother figure who keeps the child from going out into the world and finding love.  And it is usually the father figure who is too weak to do anything about it.

This is a nightmare that must be broken.  Life has to go on.  The young must marry the young.  The old must yield to the young.  Fortunately the young are not without resources.  There is usually a beneficent person:  a wise and mysterious person, usually ancient or ageless:  a grandmother, the wise old man in the woods, a magical being.  They tell stories and reveal secrets to the children, articulate their deepest fears, and reveal their unconscious dreams.  The magical benefactor helps the child solve riddles, reveals to the child strength she does not know she possesses, gives her a magic object, socializes the child to marry and have children, all against the wishes of the parents.  The evil magic is undone when a suitable lover comes along.  The impediment, the cannibalism, the incorporation, fails.  Fairy tale children and grandparents get along because they have a common enemy: the parents.

The happy ending results in the establishment of a healthy family.  Either the victimized child escapes and marries her true love, or the children band together against the weak father and wicked step mother, the mother is killed, and the father and children form a new family.

“Frog Went A-Courting” is a very old song, imported from Europe.  Just when the happy ending should occur in a fairy tale, the worst possible catastrophe occurs.  Not only is the marriage unfulfilled, but the bride is eaten.  It is a very sad tale, humorously told, of unrequited love caused by the death of the bride at her wedding.  And it endures to this day because it resonates in the primordial family issues identified by Leslie Fiedler.  Tragedy always inspires humor.  It is easy to imagine how some real life wedding misfortune was transformed into a jocular ballad and sung down through the ages, the original sorrow utterly lost.

Traditional, “Frog Went A-Courting,” No publisher (1955).  From Pete Seeger, Birds Beasts Bugs and Little Fishes: Animal Folk Songs Sung by Pete Seeger, Folkways Records, FCS 7610 (1968).  Album Art – Maggie MacGowan.

(I introduced the great American scholar, Leslie Fiedler, in Part I of these essays on children’s music.  My comments are informed by concepts introduced in a graduate course Leslie taught on children’s literature.)

A girl sings a jump rope rhyme.  She pronounces the name Sa-LO-my, so it half-rhymes with “baloney.”

Salome was a dancer
She danced before the king
And every time she danced
She wiggled everything
“Stop!” said the king,
“You can’t do that in here:
“Baloney!” said Salome,
And kicked the chandelier.

So here is a rhyme about Salome, daughter of a hottie named Herodias who was married to Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and Perea.  Salome performed such a beguiling dance for Herod that he offered her any gift she would ask.  The wicked Herodias urged Salome to ask for the head of John the Baptist, and we know how that story ended, even though Salome recanted the request.*

The Bible does not give us much information about Salome, which has opened the door for other story tellers to make her their own.  Oscar Wilde made Salome the provocateur who perversely kisses the bloody lips of the severed head of John.  Richard Strauss has Salome demand John’s head because he refused her lustful advances.  Rita Hayworth does a spectacular dance of the seven veils in the 1953 movie, portraying Salome is a sensuous dimwit who is entirely a victim of circumstance.  Now, little girls are jump roping to a story about Salome’s blithe and impudent dance.

Leslie Fiedler said that the idea of childhood has changed considerably over the ages.  Childhood, as we commonly think of it in the Modern World is a recently invented phenomenon.  It was not so long ago that the position in society of pre-adolescent children was little more than that of a pet or a slave.  They would be sent to work in factories, girls were married to much older men, and all children could be beaten at will.  But Leslie argued that, despite the protections that now safeguard the well-being of children, they are still, when necessary, capable of functioning in an adult environment, and can learn to deal with so-called adult issues.  They can accept guidance and offer their own unique perspectives in coping with such misfortunes as death, poverty, and divorce.

Leslie’s point was that children are capable of a deeper understanding and more sophisticated insight than the kitten and flower universe to which we commonly try to sequester them.  This is validated by television programs which, Leslie maintained, are almost all nothing more than children’s stories.  Children watch and process tragic news stories, violent crime shows, and polysemic sitcoms.  The reason groups concerned about children’s welfare demand programming expressly for children is because they know children absorb it all.  They apprehend, or imitate, or at least remember, adult dialog and adult images on television.  Similarly, as I mentioned in Part I of these essays, this sophistication is reflected in the literature that children choose and love.  Thus, it should not be surprising to hear little children jump roping to a story about an immodest and insolent dancer named Salome.

Traditional, “Salome,” Public Domain.  Performed by Washington, D.C. Schoolchildren (Recorded 1976 at Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife, Washington, D. C. (1976)).  From Old Mother Hippletoe: Rural and Urban Children’s Songs, New World Records: Recording Anthology of American Music, Inc., NW 291 (1978).  Album design – Elaine Sherer Cox; Cover Art – “Story Hour” by Mabel McKibbin Farmer.

*  Bible, Mark 6:21-29; Matthew 14:6-11, NIV Translation.

The boyish folk singer Michael Cooney.  His persona is adolescent, and his voice is high and thin, and truth be told, if his livelihood rested exclusively on his vocal ability, I don’t think I would have heard of him.  But he is a virtuoso of the six string guitar, twelve string guitar, five string banjo, fretless banjo, concertina, slide, finger picking, pickety picking, and something new with each album.  And he knows at least a million songs, all kinds of traditional folk music.  Michael Cooney is one of the greatest folklorists alive, though I don’t believe he ever went to college, and he doesn’t stand around smoking a pipe, cultivating a trimmed beard, and wearing corduroy jackets with patches on the elbows.  The liner notes to his albums are as historically informed, musicologically analytical, imaginatively recondite, and exploding with love for the subject as anything in the Journal of American Folklore.  Fact is, he is one of the greatest deepest folk singers who ever lived.  And everything he ever did, whether he meant it or not – or whether the creators of the songs he sings meant it or not – was made for children.

Here is a silly song, played on the banjo, about a poor sap who is drafted and sent into war.  To those unfamiliar with the childish mind, a song about the sufferings of war may not seem an appropriate subject for a children’s song.

I wish you could have been there for Leslie Fiedler’s lectures on Huckleberry Finn.  He said that it is a mistake to equate childhood with innocence.  Those who call childhood a time of innocence are unaware of the natural inclinations of children.  Huck plays cruel tricks on Jim, and this reminds us that cruelty is a childish impulse.  The cruel humor of children exposes an ambivalence we are reluctant to acknowledge.  Leslie said this irony, the selfishness and brutality in the children we idealize as adorable and gentle, is a deception all humans blithely adopt.  There was never a world of innocence.  Even metaphorically, ascribing innocence to childhood does not make sense. The childhood of humanity was rooted in brute survival.  The childhood of technology was rooted in war.  The childhood of America was rooted in slavery.

There is hardly a book with more terror and wickedness and cruelty than Huckleberry Finn.  The hero is a young teenage boy who smokes, plays hooky, lies continuously; he decides on his own that what preachers, teachers, and legislators have told him is wrong; he runs away from family, civilization, and the church; he has an ambivalent racist-love relationship with Jim – he follows the impulses of his own foolish heart.  The thing is, kids really respond to all this wildness.  And, by any standard, Huckleberry Finn is one of the greatest works of children’s literature.  Leslie said, if you do not like Huckleberry Finn, you were born old.

And so it is with this song.  If you can’t find the virtue of childish laughter in this song about a very serious problem, you were born old.  After all, ain’t the neglect of laughter part of the problem?

The Captain said to fire at will
And I said, “Which is he?’
The old fool got so ragin’ mad
He fired his gun at me
In that war, that crazy war.

Verse after verse of the madcap adventures of this reluctant warrior.

A cannonball flew overhead,
I started home right then;
The Captain he came right after me,
But a General beat us in,
In that war, that crazy war.

According to Michael’s scholarly notes, this is a song that has been around at least since the Spanish Civil War.  It has many verses, some versions referencing specific battles.  And, as Michael points out, it is reassuring to know that the Vietnam generation was not unique in resenting being dragged off to a crazy war.

No author, traditional, “That Crazy War,” No publisher (No date).  From Michael Cooney, Michael Cooney or “The Cheese Stands Alone,” Folk-Legacy Records, Inc., FSI 35 (1968).  Album design – Not credited.

This is yet another superb album on the wondrous New World Records label – a collection of children’s songs called Old Mother Hippletoe.  The great Almeda Riddle sings this animal song, “Little Rooster.”  As the fantastic liner notes to the album explain, folklorists classify this as a cumulative song because it creates an ever expanding catalog or list as it progresses, and it could, literally, never end.  “Old MacDonald” and the “Twelve Days of Christmas” are well known examples.  Just about every person who recorded an album for children has performed this song:

I love my little rooster
And my rooster loves me
I cherish that rooster
Neath the green bay tree
My little rooster goes
Cock-a-doodle doo-doodle-doo-doodle-dooooo

And of course she loves her hog and her guinea and her hen and her dog just as much.

Leslie Fiedler pointed out that stories told by children don’t have a beginning a middle and an end.  The child will say “. . . and then . . . and then . . . and then . . . .”  That is why cumulative songs are so appealing to adults and children.  We have all, as children, told, and as parents, endured, this kind of story.

Traditional, “Little Rooster,” Public Domain.  Performed by Almeda Riddle (originally released on Various Artists, Southern Folk Heritage Series: American Folk Songs For Children, Atlantic Records, SD 1350 (1959)).  From Old Mother Hippletoe: Rural and Urban Children’s Songs, New World Records: Recording Anthology of American Music, Inc., NW 291 (1978).  Album design – Elaine Sherer Cox; Cover Art – “Story Hour” by Mabel McKibbin Farmer.

One of the best courses I ever took in all my many years of college was a graduate class on children’s literature by the legendary American scholar Leslie Fiedler.  What I learned from Leslie informs my interpretations of children’s music.

Leslie said that children’s literature – books written specifically for children – is a recent phenomenon.  Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, published in 1865 was probably the first such book.  The same is true of children’s songs.  Much of what we now regard as classic children’s music, was never intended for children at the time it was created.

Fairy tales were originally not written for children at all.  Even the Mother Goose stories of Charles Perrault – author of “Cinderella” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” and inventor of the Fairy God Mother – were meant to be read by courtiers.  Unexpurgated fairy tales are often full of flagrant lust and blunt violence.  One of Leslie’s favorite fairy tales was “The Juniper Tree,” collected by the Brothers Grimm – a bewildering and mystical tale in which the wicked step mother serves her husband a stew made from the body of his beloved son.

Leslie said that practically every great 19th Century American novel has become a children’s classic:  Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, Rip Van Winkle, the stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe.  Similarly many great 19th Century British works have entered the children’s canon: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and several of the books of Charles Dickens.  And novels of the 20th century like Gone With the Wind and Of Mice and Men have been taken in by children.  Leslie said Gone With the Wind is the greatest American book of the 1930’s, meaning it shuts down F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, and Dr. Seuss.  Beginning at the age of nine, my daughter, Cadance, read Gone with the Wind over and over.  Most of the history of children’s literature is the appropriation of adult literature by kids.  In fact, one of the marks of great literature is whether or not it has been picked up by children.

This is certainly true of children’s music as well, as is demonstrated by many of the children’s songs I will discuss in the future.  But with contemporary, late 20th Century children’s music, I would suggest, there is also a reverse dynamic.  Nowadays, the mark of a great piece of music for children is that it is appreciated not only by the sprogs, but by the biddies as well.  So much children’s music is patronizing and panders to a misguided interpretation of a child’s interests.  Children know the world is not all bunnies and Magilla Gorillas and silliness.  When I was a yard ape, my favorite songs were “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley, “A Guy is a Guy” by Doris Day, and everything and anything by Harry Belafonte.  None of this music was intended for children.  The one ostensibly childish song, “Purple People Eater,” concerns cannibalism, about which I will tell you much more, later.  Some of the best children’s tunes are old gospel songs.

The greatest children’s songs do not avoid romantic love, loneliness, poop and pee, spirituality, violence, and death.  And these subjects are prevalent in the ancient folk songs that have entered the children’s canon.  I am not suggesting that high production contemporary commercial kid’s music can’t be great.  Nor am I suggesting that a great children’s song cannot be grounded in calculated innocence.  The most polished songs in the Disney movies like, “You Can Fly,” “Zorro,” “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” “Wringle Wrangle,” or “I’m Wishing,” and the guileless sweetness of Raffi, Dick Lourie, and Sandy Tobias Offenheim are as captivating to children as the wise, edgy, sparsely produced songs of Woody Guthrie, Ella Jenkins, or Leadbelly.  The greatness of all this music lies in the fact that it captivates the squirts and the coots and all the schlimazels in between.

Photo of Leslie Fiedler by Todd Goodrich.